A Long, Dark Tunnel
by Talonwings
Summary: The story of Isalea Talonwing, told as she herself would tell it-in bits and fragments, reflecting the gleam of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. This is a chronicle of Isa's journey from death and resurrection in the heart of Scourge territory to the reclamation of the honor that was stolen from her with her final breath.
1. Chapter 1

For perhaps the first time in his life, Lysath Starspeaker found himself wrestling with a serious moral dilemma.

It was not the thought of the oncoming battle which frightened or disturbed him; although young, Lysath was a skilled warrior and no novice when it came to combat. He knew the rules of the game, and knew them well—in war, you kill or you die. A painful truth, but an unavoidable one nonetheless. Lysath took no pleasure in killing his opponents, but his regret was mitigated by the satisfaction of knowing that he prevented them from doing evil.

But how to prevent evil when it was being done by one's own people?

Lysath gazed around at the battlefield in frustration. The Alliance had certainly gathered no shortage of warriors to combat this oncoming threat; soldiers and magicians of every race could be seen gathered in great swaths of flesh and armor across the already-desecrated Plaguelands, their banners and sigils glinting in the dull red light of a hidden sun. There were the humans, proud and aloof beneath the Stormwind lion; the dwarves, stocky and strong in their mithril and adamant plate. The gnomes were not armed for battle, but their machines certainly were, gears and gizmos spinning with a distinctly ominous humming sound.

And here, surrounding Lysath himself, were his own people, the Kaldorei, their haughty and angular faces reflecting both disgust and suspicion as they surveyed their surroundings. The night elves still had not learned to trust their allies completely, the young warrior mused, and likely they never would. Still, they had promised their aid, and against such a threat as the Scourge, every possible type of aid was necessary.

And _that_ , thought Lysath with a shake of his head, was what brought him to his current ethical misgivings. When the night elves had promised every warrior and every druid, they had meant _every_ warrior and _every_ druid, down to the very last man and woman.

Almost without meaning to, he darted another glance up the rise which overshadowed the gathered Alliance troops, toward the sheltered hill where the druids of Darnassus would be preparing their powerful magic. Somewhere beneath those trees was his mate, Isalea Talonwing, six months pregnant with their first child. It was going to be a girl; Isa knew somehow, although Lysath had no idea how she could be so certain. The thought of having a daughter always brought a radiant smile to his mate's face and lit an ardent fire in her bright silver eyes. Lysath didn't much care what the child's gender was, so long as it loved its mother quite as much as Isa already loved her unborn baby.

 _But it may never get the chance to love her_ , he grimly reminded himself. _Now that they have called her here to fight in their war. Who commands a pregnant woman to fight?!_

The thought of his mate run through on the end of a Death Knight's runeblade made Lysath sizzle anew with rage. It was unthinkable that they should call Isa to be here, and unforgivable that Lysath should have _allowed_ her to come. But he knew that she—and he—had had no choice in the matter. If the Scourge were allowed to overrun the Eastern Kingdoms, it would be only a matter of time before the necrotic army made its way across the sea to Darnassus, and then they would be doomed either way.

 _Better to finish this business before it ever gets started._

"Commander Starspeaker!" someone called to him.

Lysath turned his head to answer the call, immediately bowing at the sight of the High Priestess, Tyrande Whisperwind. She was a tall and austere-looking woman, her eyes glinting with a bright inner light which Lysath knew to be the mark of Elune. Despite her severe appearance and her intimidating war garb, however, Tyrande's smile at him was kind, and Lysath returned the smile gratefully.

"High Priestess Whisperwind," he said respectfully. "How fare you?"

Tyrande shook her head. "In truth, not well," she said quietly. "The undead march ever closer. I can feel their contamination in the air." The look on her face said quite plainly that she found it repulsive.

"Do you think we will succeed?" Lysath asked.

"We must succeed." Tyrande looked at him with a frank expression. "Otherwise, the whole of Azeroth will surely die."

Lysath bowed his head in acknowledgement of the truth of her words, though they were hard to hear from someone as influential as Tyrande. Her attitude might turn the tide of this battle; the Kaldorei followed her every word.

"And the druids?" he asked, to distract himself. "How go their preparations?"

At this, the high priestess gave him a knowing but gentle smile. "Isalea is fine," she said with a soft chuckle.

Lysath flushed slightly, but Tyrande only laughed. "I know what it is to be in love, Commander Starspeaker," she said. "I, too, had a druid for a mate once. You get used to worrying about them."

"High Priestess, she is to have a child." He found that his voice sounded suddenly desperate, almost pleading. "Is there anything…?"

Tyrande was already shaking her head sadly. "Unfortunately not," she replied, and there was sincere and honest sorrow in her tone. "I will command the druids to keep her at the rear of their lines, but she is a Druid of the Talon, and will not, I suspect, take kindly to being coddled. And we need her, Lysath."

"I know, High Priestess," Lysath sighed. "I will not take any more of your time."

"I came to give you a message," Tyrande said, inclining her head to him as she turned to go.

"What is that?" Lysath asked curiously.

"Have hope." Tyrande smiled gently, and then the smile evolved and became something else; something fierce and almost feral. "And do not let the undead get behind your lines."

She vanished as quickly as she had arrived, and Lysath turned his eyes back toward the horizon and the promised arrival of the risen hordes.

The Scourge poured over them in a sudden flood; Lysath had never seen an army like the Lich King's before in his life. Even in minor skirmishes with minions of the Legion, there had been some kind of organization, some sort of order to both sides. The demons, at least, were sentient enough to group themselves and execute strategies. The undead possessed no such gift of awareness; when they arrived, they arrived all at once, pressing en masse against the gathered Alliance defenders in a wave of bones and claws and teeth. There were ghouls and geists, wights and wraiths and banshees, ectoplasmic oozes of all disgusting varieties; huge flesh-crafted abominations, built from the remnants of corpses in every possible stage of rot, towered over the smaller creatures at the rear of the lines, belching out massive clouds of plague and infection. Behind the abominations sailed the Val'kyr, silent and foreboding on ghostly wings, and beneath them marched the Nerubians, their mandibles and pincers clicking with an eagerness audible even across the wide field which separated them from the defensive line.

"Prepare yourselves, men!" Lysath called to his gathered warriors. The Kaldorei men and women let up a fierce cry, raising swords and glaives in answer to their commander's call. Lysath bowed his head momentarily and uttered a brief but fervent prayer.

 _Blessed Mother Moon, please watch over my Isa. Keep her safe, and keep our daughter safe._

"They are upon us!" someone shouted from the humans' line.

And so they were.

Immediately, all of Lysath's strength and attention was engaged in keeping the undead waves from breaking through his living barrier of soldiers. All around him, shouts and screams ascended from the battlefield into the sky as living and undead warrior alike clashed and fell with the strokes of blade and claw.

Behind the lines of melee fighters, the magicians and healers worked at their own tasks; bolts of fire and ice sailed from mages' palms and wands into the pools of zombified creatures, blasting great empty holes into the undead waves where they exploded or froze. Arcane missiles glided serenely overhead to crash into the chests of the abominations, leaving eerily beautiful purple scars of magic along the things' seam-rippled bodies. The priests worked almost as one being, elf and human alike alternating between smiting ghouls with the power of the Light and sending brief bursts of magic to replenish the strength of a comrade or to patch up minor wounds.

The druids still had not made an appearance, and for that, Lysath was almost savagely glad. The longer the defenders could hold back the undead without the help of the druids, the safer that Isa would be. He drove the point of his long sword into a ghoul's ribcage, shattering the bones and sending the thing toppling to the ground; almost immediately, he was set upon by another three of the creatures, each one wrestling with the others to get at him with claws and gnashing molars. He severed their heads with contempt, not bothering to watch them as they fell.

They began, slowly, to punch a hole in the overwhelming flood; the Scourge's numbers, though large, certainly had an end somewhere. But Lysath saw more and more tired defenders beginning to fall to bites and swipes from their opponents. The living, unfortunately, had one serious disadvantage in this conflict: they could become exhausted. The dead could simply roll on forever, if they so chose.

"The druids!" one of the night elf warriors cried. "Look!"

Lysath's heart sank as he saw the first of the roots rising from the ground to ensnare a group of stumbling geists.

The druids had joined the battle at last.

Roots exploded from the earth, tangling around the feet of the marching hordes and bringing them tumbling in great masses to the ground. Bolts of green lightning and sizzling lunar fire exploded over the trapped undead, reducing them to nothing more than piles of ash. In between the weaving roots and the deadly spells darted those druids who chose to adopt different forms as they fought; massive bears and prowling cats and majestic stags—and there, diving from the sky, were the glinting feathers of the hawks and kestrels.

 _Isa._

Lysath could not tell, at a distance, which of the birds might be his mate in her shapeshifted form. They all looked much the same to him; brownish-grey, swooping blurs delivering deadly strikes to the heads of the Nerubians and the abominations, which were too tall for the defenders on the ground to reach. Still, his heart squeezed tightly every time one of the massive, grotesque corpse creatures reached up and swatted a bird from the sky.

And even with the druids' power, it would not be enough.

"What is _that_?" a Kaldorei warrior near him gasped, pointing beyond the lines of abominations and insectoid creatures to where a new group of opponents had just become visible. Unlike the shambling, shuffling ghouls, these creatures stood upright and walked with slinking, graceful confidence. They were clad head to toe in black armor which seemed to suck in the surrounding light, casting it off as an eerie blue glow. The figures came in all shapes and sizes, but the long and deadly blades swinging from every belt or hand were identical, and Lysath felt a distinct shiver run down his spine at the sight of them.

"Death Knights," he said, more to himself than in answer to his fellow soldier's question.

The Death Knights were the elite warriors of the Scourge; unlike their rotted minions, they were animated by a much more elegant and sinister necromancy, with the result being that they quite resembled what they had once been: living champions of the noble races gathered here in defense of their lands. Despite the resemblance, however, they were still utterly in the thrall of the Lich King, and they killed without mercy or hesitation.

One of the Death Knights raised a commanding hand; Lysath could not hear the order, if it was even spoken aloud, but the abominations drew back and cleared a path for the armored warriors, even as the defenders continued to hail down magic on their heads.

The same Knight gestured almost languorously toward one of the swooping druids, and in moments, the bird had been yanked from the sky by long tendrils of dark energy, its thin neck clamped securely in the Death Knight's glove. The undead soldier gave one quick jerk of his wrist, and the shapeshifted druid fell lifeless to the ground beneath him.

"Tell the druids to get down!" Lysath shouted, fear releasing a burst of adrenaline into his veins. Luckily, the druids already seemed to have taken the hint, and were soaring away from the line of Death Knights to disappear back into the glade from which they had come, presumably to take shelter. Lysath forced himself not to look at the dead kestrel on the ground.

 _It's not Isa. It can't be Isa._

He had very little time to think about it; the Death Knights surged forward and engaged the Alliance soldiers, their attack eerily absent of war cries or any sound at all other than the stamp of their footsteps on the earth. Lysath readied his blade again, preparing for a much bitterer and longer fight.

The Death Knights quickly broke the defenders' lines, felling the soldiers left and right. Lysath felt a stab of shame, but he tamped it down and gritted his teeth, holding his own as best he could. Slashes decorated his arms and torso, and his long, inky blue hair was matted with blood, but still, he did not fall. He could not fall; he had to keep them away from the glade.

Two of the shadowy warriors sprinted past him and up the rise, following the trail that the druids had traced toward the glade. With an anguished shout, Lysath disengaged from his own opponent and raced after them, slipping on blood-drenched grass as his exhausted legs carried him toward the stand of dead trees. The Death Knights reached the glade before he did, disappearing beneath the shadow of the tangled, interlocked branches.

"Isa!" Lysath shouted, hoping somehow to get a warning to his mate before they could reach her. "Isa, run!"

 _Please, my love, please run._

The glade was much deeper and darker than he had expected; although the trees were dead and leafless, their boughs had snarled together into a nearly impenetrable wall of prickly thorns and poking twigs, blotting out a good deal of the reddish sunlight. What did manage to make its way to the ground was patchy and intermittent; luckily for Lysath, he was accustomed to doing things mostly in the dark, since the Kaldorei were a generally nocturnal race. He navigated his way frantically between the twisting trunks, following the distantly fading sound of the Death Knights' footfalls.

A scream—a _woman's_ scream—erupted from somewhere deeper within the glade, and Lysath let go his own cry of rage and fear in response. He did not know if the voice was Isa, but the Death Knights had clearly reached the druids' hiding place. Those who could not run would be slaughtered.

A gash on his side was beginning to burn, and Lysath cursed his own frailty, urging his weakening legs onward, toward the rising sounds of death. More screams resounded from the druids' camp, along with the sickening sounds of blades piercing flesh, heavy and final.

"Isa!" he screamed, hoarsely. He knew she would not hear him, whether she were alive or dead. His voice was fading with his strength.

At last, he stumbled into the camp, only to behold it—the _horror_ of the Death Knights' savage work. Bodies littered the small clearing, some decorated with multiple wounds, others with single, slowly bleeding punctures to the chest or abdomen. They were _all_ dead, that much was certain. The Death Knights had vanished; whether they had left for good or were just circling around to get _him_ , Lysath neither knew nor cared. All he knew was that he had to search these faces; he had to discover if his mate lay among the slain. His heart heavy and sick, he moved into the camp and began bending down to inspect the tortured corpses, feeling both relieved and more terrified every time one of them was _not_ Isa.

A footfall, and then another, made him look up, his hand moving instantly to the hilt of his sword. Someone was stepping out from beneath the trees—someone clad in the green-brown robe of the druids, torn and bloodied. It was a woman, unusually short for a Kaldorei, with a long braid of scarlet hair which draped heavily over one shoulder. Her head was bowed low, her hand clutching a discarded sword, which she dragged along with her.

Lysath almost fell to his knees with the staggering force of his relief.

"Isa! My love, you are safe!" He immediately moved toward her, feeling acutely the weakness in his ankles and calves. He had been running for a long time, and only now was the true exhaustion beginning to set in.

Isa did not look up at him, only continued to step forward, one foot after the other, dragging the sword behind her. It was a blood-coated scimitar, one of the Kaldorei warriors' blades, and its tip left a shallow rut in the earth as it traced a path behind the young woman's feet.

"Isa?" Lysath looked at her more closely, concern and worry creasing his brow. "Are you all right?" Her steps were unusually heavy and off-rhythm, without any of her customary grace of movement, but Lysath could not really blame her for being stunned and distressed. She had probably watched all of these druids, her closest friends, being slaughtered around her. How she had managed to escape was a miraculous mystery.

"It will be all right, my moon rose." He had reached her now, and he raised his hands to pull her to his chest in a soothing embrace. "I promise you. I will not let anything harm you."

Isa raised her head.

The shock which flooded over Lysath at the sight of her face curdled quickly into utter, chilling despair and rage. Her cheeks were marred with slashes, one lip split and gently bleeding, but he was not focused on that. Her eyes, her beautiful silver eyes, which had so many times enthralled him and captured his heart, had turned a deadly, icy blue, burning with an unearthly and almost demonic light.

" _No_ ," he whispered.

The Death Knight raised her scimitar wordlessly, and Lysath could not even think to defend himself as she plunged it deep into his abdomen.

An explosion of pain burst across his consciousness, and he collapsed, the agony and his weakness combining to incapacitate him wholly. Isa let the sword go and stood over him, staring emotionlessly down at him with those haunting, horrifying eyes. And now the other corpses around her were beginning to stand to their feet, too, sapphire light flickering to life beneath every pair of lids as they were raised anew in undeath.

 _She is dead. My beloved, my partner, my lifemate…I have failed her. I let her die, and our daughter with her._

Lysath's sight was flickering now, fading to darkness, but he felt the tears as they streamed from his dimming eyes.

"I am so sorry…my love," he whispered.

And Lysath Starspeaker departed then from life.


	2. Chapter 2

The rain was warm on Isa's face; warm and oddly sticky.

That was the first thought to pass through the young Kaldorei woman's mind as she opened her eyes from the foggy stupor. The second thought was that it never, _ever_ rained in the Plaguelands.

Isa didn't know when she had fallen into the miasma that seemed to have overtaken her sight until just a moment ago. It was as if a cloudy veil had been lying across her eyes, only to be thrown back with a sudden jerk, the world suddenly sharpening into a clarity that was almost painful.

They were still in the Plaguelands, only Isa no longer stood beneath the grove of dead, twisted trees that had marked the druids' sheltering place. It was odd, and she wondered if she had been knocked unconscious during the battle and moved to another place to recover.

She let her eyes take in the scene around her, growing more and more confused by the moment. She stood before a small stone chapel—human-built, by the look of it—with a strange assortment of what seemed, to her shock, to be both allies and enemies. On one side of the lawn before the church, which was littered with battered, broken corpses—Isa quickly turned her eyes away—and fallen weapons, a group of warriors, both Alliance and Horde, stood in a line, their expressions hard and unyielding. She recognized Tirion Fordring, a prominent paladin of the human race, but her eyebrows rose in some surprise at the sight of his silvery hair and beard. He looked like he had aged twenty years. Her surprise only grew as she noted the tall figure standing beside him; it looked suspiciously like one of the Eredar demons, only this figure's skin was blue, rather than red, and he was dressed in shimmering gold-and-silver plate—the sure sign of a paladin. Isa had never seen such a thing before in her life, and she wondered when the strange figure had arrived.

Almost more shocking to Isa, however, were the soldiers arrayed on the other side of the battlefield from Fordring and his men. They were all clad in black plate, and some wore horned helmets, wintry blue eyes glinting from beneath the shadows with the light of death and decay. Their leader was a tall man with raven-dark hair, which fell in gleaming sheets across his pale, bloodless face. The sword he carried at his back glimmered with an unearthly light that set Isa's teeth slightly on edge to behold.

 _Death Knights. And Darion Mograine himself._

The Death Knights all seemed a little bewildered—much like Isa herself, in fact—to find themselves standing where they stood. They shook their heads and gazed about them in confusion, and Isa caught sight of blank, slightly numb stares on the faces of some of the helmet-less ones. They looked oddly familiar in a way that she couldn't really place, but that sent faint shivers down her spine.

 _Why aren't they killing one another?_

Mograine opened his mouth then, and his voice, when he spoke, chilled Isa to the bone. It echoed with the sibilant whispers of the grave, as if ten other dead voices spoke with him.

"Death Knights!" he called, his words reverberating around the field. "You are free! No longer are you under the Lich King's thrall!"

Isa blinked hard, fighting a rising feeling of sickness. The declaration stirred something in her, something nauseating and bloody; she felt it tickling at the back of her mind with insidious fingers, pressing against her consciousness even as she fought to block it out.

"You now stand with the Knights of the Ebon Blade," Mograine continued, his voice a sharp-edged blade in the stillness of the air. "We will fight to put an end to the Lich King, and we will take our vengeance on him for what he has done to us—and what he has made us do to others."

 _The glade…I was there. I remember…_

Isa shut the memory down before it could surface, feeling a yawning pit opening within her and threatening to suck her down if she allowed herself to concentrate on it. Her fingers were cold—no, her whole _body_ was cold, right down to her core. She _radiated_ cold into the air, and the warm, sticky rain clung to her freezing skin eagerly.

The memories fought back against Isa's lock and key, swelling and expanding until she could no longer contain them, and one by one, they slipped through.

 _A voice, a voice in her mind—it was the voice of death itself, calling to her from somewhere far away. She held a sword in her hands, and stared down at the quailing human villagers, absolutely relentless in the face of their abject terror._

 _"_ _Leave no survivors." Her master's voice caressed her mind, threading itself through every vein of her consciousness._

 _With a vicious grin, Isa obeyed._

 _The Argent Dawn's prisoners all watched her, their faces stoic as she marched into the small wooden shack. She ignored all of them but one, her stride slow and casual, almost lazy, as she approached the woman. She had intentionally left her helmet behind, and the Lich King breathed his desires into her mind—he wanted nothing less than total suffering._

 _Lady Oakenthorn's eyes widened as Isa stepped from the shadows and into the light, letting the dim rays of the dying sun illuminate her pale, hollow features and emotionless eyes._

 _"_ _Isalea Talonwing!" the older Kaldorei cried out, her voice breaking with sorrow. "What's happened to you?!"_

 _Isa did not hear any of her pleas; her petitions to fight against the will of the Lich King were lost on deaf and uncaring ears. Isa's master whispered his approval into her mind._

 _"_ _What's taking so long?!" Bloodbane roared from outside._

 _Lady Oakenthorn lowered her head, tears glistening in her silver eyes. She was broken._

 _Isa severed her head with a single blow, and did not look back to watch it roll away from the body, even as the other prisoners screamed._

 _She stood in Acherus, and waited to be chosen._

 _She had been brought here because she represented the best of what the Scourge's armies had brought back from the battlefield—strong, fit, and hungry for blood. Even now, the gnawing desire to kill burned beneath her freezing skin, and Isa almost had to hold herself back to keep from ripping into the initiates beside her._

Soon, _the dark voice promised in her mind._ Obey me, and soon, you will have your fill of blood.

 _Isa could not stop the expression of savage delight from twisting her features; Razuvious noticed it and smirked broadly, coming to a stop in front of her._

 _"_ _This looks particularly bloodthirsty," the instructor cackled. "What's your name, initiate?"_

 _"_ _Talonwing," Isa replied immediately, feeling the word roll from her tongue, slick as blood. "Isalea Talonwing."_

 _"_ _You'll do just fine, Talonwing," Razuvious replied with a nod._

 _She was in the glade._

 _The wound in her belly still leaked scarlet blood onto her torn Druid's robe. Isa didn't particularly care about that. It had hurt like hellfire to die, but now the pain was her companion, and she drew upon it eagerly, letting it feed her newly-awakened bloodlust._

 _The rest of the Druids lay around her, not yet risen. She was the strongest of them, then—she had stood first, even while they still lay prone in death, their forms adjusting to the powerful necromancy. The soft whisper in her head murmured its approval, and Isa felt a cold leap of glee at the words._

 _Someone moved at the corner of the clearing, and Isa raised her head enough to see a tall Kaldorei man with long blue hair burst from the trees, panting as if he would never draw breath again. His face was cut and scratched, one lip swollen and bleeding, and his armor was stained with blood and ichor, but he didn't seem to notice any of that, his eyes darting around frantically, almost feverishly._

 _"_ _Isa!" he screamed._

 _It was her name he was calling. From somewhere, a gentle memory bubbled to the surface, momentarily breaking the sensation of icy hunger._

 _His name was Lysath Starspeaker, and he had loved her. Her fingers rested momentarily beside the hole in her abdomen._

Amaranth is dead.

 _The voice in her mind blasted away the faint realization, filling her with that furious, cold desire once again._

He will be your first conquest _, the Lich King whispered._ Let me watch him suffer.

 _Isa bent and picked up the sword that lay beside her body; whose it was, she did not know, but she clung to it, her fingers stiff and disobedient to the magic now animating her movements. Growling softly, she dragged herself forward, toward the sounds of Lysath's shuffling feet._

 _She heard his exhale of relief when he caught sight of her, and minutes later, he was standing right in front of her, murmuring soft words of comfort. He thought to comfort_ her _, the stupid swine._

 _She raised her head to look at him, and felt a thrill of victory from the Lich King when the gladness in his eyes turned to horror and grief._

 _"_ _No…" he whispered._

 _She drove the sword through him without a word, and watched him until he faded into death, unshed tears sparkling in his eyes._

Isa could not hold back the building, keening wail in her throat as the memories flooded to the surface, bombarding her mind with the horrible truth of what she had become—and what she had _done_.

Similar noises rose from the crowd of Death Knights surrounding her, and Isa was not the only one to sink to her knees as grief and shame and revulsion overtook her. Several of them vomited into the nearby bushes; many of them wept loudly, and many more simply stood motionless, their eyes glazed over with horrified blankness as their memories assaulted them all at once. She wondered, briefly, how many of them had killed their mates and children. How many had the same blood on their hands that Isa now knew was on her own.

But she could not focus on them for long.

She kept seeing Lysath's face in her mind—it was the face she had loved ever since their adolescence, growing up beside one another in Darnassus. He had never hesitated to promise her his whole self, and Isa knew that his love for her had been pure almost to the point of holiness. He would have taken Elune's silvery orb from the sky if it had been for Isa's happiness and safety.

And she had _murdered him_. And not only that—she had _enjoyed_ it.

Isa retched and felt acid bile in her throat; the disgust was a bitter taste in her mouth, but not as terrible as the guilt and grief.

She had killed Lysath with her own hands. Their daughter Amaranth, yet unborn, had died in the womb upon Isa's own death.

Her _death_.

Isa stared down at her hands now, pale and bloodless; at the black plate armor which covered her whole body from neck to toe, glinting dully in the lifeless sunlight. She was one of them—a Death Knight, a godless creation of the Scourge, a thrall of the Lich King. Horror of the living, murderer of innocents, terror of Azeroth.

She had _killed_ Lysath.

The nausea was still there, but it was overcome completely by deep, bone-shaking emptiness. Isa curled into a ball, pressed her hands into her eyes, and wept bitterly, her chest gasping and her breath hitching as the desperate sobs forced their way from her body, out from her very soul. She cried until she had no tears left, and then she just lay there, limp against the ground, feeling the wet, sticky rain as it soaked her hair and dampened her skin.

She raised a hand to peer at it apathetically.

It wasn't rain.

Isa bowed her head again and was still for a very long time.


	3. Chapter 3

The long, low-ceilinged room was packed with bodies, and the heat and odor of the crowd were almost overpowering in such a high concentration. Dim lights flickered and cast strange shadows over the dirt-stained walls, warping the eager faces of the crowd of spectators into monstrous caricatures of amusement and excitement. From their perches atop stacks of wooden crates, the two goblins in charge of organizing the small arena's activities grinned out over the seething mass, their long-fingered green hands eagerly sifting through gold-loaded change purses.

They had been doing a steady and energetic business tonight, and the profits were only climbing as the evening declined toward true darkness, gold coins flying at fever pitch between the hands of increasingly more drunken gamblers. The assembled figures, both spectator and fighter, were a motley assortment of races and sizes—though the arena was securely hidden deep in Alliance territory, there was no shortage of Horde profiles, and one was as likely to see an orc, troll, or blood elf among the crowds as a human, dwarf, or gnome.

Lynzee Gearspin, the chief organizer of the arena, glanced down at her assistant, her dark brown eyes alight with excitement at the gleam of gold and the loud sounds of inebriated cheering all around her. "We're doin' pretty good tonight, eh, Brixet?"

Brixet Blackwrench leered up at her, and Lynzee had to fight the urge to roll her eyes at the sight of his yellow teeth, most of them capped or entirely replaced with solid gold. Brix was a good helper, but he could be extraordinarily short-sighted and vain on occasion.

"The money's flowin' in!" he cackled. "At this rate, we should top a thousand gold by midnight, and they don't stop comin' until long after that on a good night."

Lynzee nodded with satisfaction, her fingers already twitching in anticipation of the feeling of so many coins weighing down her pockets. "How many fighters we got in line so far?"

"Twenty-four right now," Brix said after a quick head count. "And that's not countin' the ones who've already fought and are waitin' for their second go."

"Excellent!" Lynzee rubbed her hands together with undisguised glee. "Tell the healers not to skimp on patchin' up the ones who need a bandage or two. I want these fights to go on as long as possible. And tell 'em to _make sure_ no one dies—we don't need lawsuits filed. The last thing I want is to have to move shop just to escape a suit."

"You got it, boss," Brix replied with a salute. "I'll go let 'em know. Want me to get the next round started?"

"Yeah, go tell Lem it's time to call in." Lynzee crossed one leg over the other and shifted to a more comfortable position in preparation to watch the next round of fights. "And tell him not to be so enthusiastic—it makes him hard to understand."

Brix saluted again and vanished into the throbbing press of bodies, nimbly dodging spills from the drinks held in several less-than-steady hands. Lynzee watched until she couldn't see him anymore before turning to behold the ring, the centerpiece of her shady and beloved business venture.

Technically, brawling arenas were illegal in Alliance territory, but that hadn't stopped Lynzee and Brix from finding a clever and roundabout circumvention to that law—the arena was based in a neutral zone, hidden beneath the Deeprun Tram which traveled between Ironforge and Stormwind. The narrow chamber was definitely not built to any sort of safety code—the walls were rickety in some places, and the space was much too cramped for the huge number of people it accommodated, but in Lynzee's opinion, that just increased the illicit and enticing atmosphere of the whole affair. The ring itself was her crown jewel; surrounded by thick cords of wire, it was a rectangular empty place carved out of the pulsing mass of spectators, a haven for the bloody heat of battle. And although no one had died in Lynzee's arena _yet_ , the battles did occasionally get rather bloody—Lynzee didn't mind a little blood, though, especially not with all the money it brought in.

Brix popped back up beside her, and Lynzee glanced interrogatively at him with one eyebrow raised. "Well?"

"Lem's about to call in," the squat goblin confirmed with a nod. "And you'll be interested—there's a Death Knight in this match."

Lynzee _hmphed_ a little. "Why do I care? There's plenty of Death Knights come down here."

"It's a woman," Brix replied.

At that piece of news, Lynzee was indeed interested. Most of the Death Knights who showed up at her arena were male, and their contributions to the fight were usually just their way of seeking to slake their thirst for blood. Lynzee didn't really care about some testosterone-thirsty corpse walker trying to get his high from fighting, but this would be the first female Death Knight she'd ever seen, period, let alone seen in battle.

Before the goblin boss could make another comment, the distinctively booming voice of Lem Jayfeather, the broad tauren bull who served as their announcer, cut across the babble of drunken conversation and brought a hush over the crowd. "The first fight of Round Five will be underway in just sixty seconds!"

There was a harsh roar from the spectators, and Lem paused to let them finish before raising his megaphone to his mouth again to call the names of the combatants. "On the left side of the ring, we have a returning contestant; you all know and love him, so give a loud cheer for Kierson Taylor!"

A tall, powerfully-built human male stepped into the ring, muscles bulging beneath dark tan skin already dripping with sweat. Taylor's eyes gleamed with arrogance and the desire for battle, and he raised his arms high in a stance which indicated how much he believed that victory was already his. The crowd cheered wildly again, and the human drank it in, a smile creasing his wide lips.

When the buzz had settled again, Lem's voice rose over the crowd's. "On the right side of the ring, we have a first-time competitor! I'm sure we're all curious how she'll do against this champ, but you know the Death Knights—it's in the job description. Let's welcome Isalea Talonwing!"

There was no cheering as the second fighter stepped silently into the ring, the dim light glinting from beaten grey armor. She was not wearing the saronite plate of the Knights, but the unearthly blue gleam of her eyes made it all too evident what she was, her gaze cutting coldly over the watchers as she turned her head to survey them. Her cheekbones were high and sculpted, her long scarlet hair tied back into a severe bun to avoid obstructing her in battle. She was small, for an elf, and Taylor dwarfed her by several inches, but her body was compact and rippled with muscle—clearly, she was a warrior despite her size.

Taylor laughed unpleasantly as he beheld his opponent. "So, one of the corpse walkers has come to slake their thirst? Do you want to drink my blood, little dead one?" He spread his arms wide in a mocking challenge, and jeers rose from the audience in accord with his words.

"If I had come to kill you, then you would be dead." The Death Knight's words silenced the watchers almost immediately. They echoed with the haunting timbre of ten other dead voices speaking in unison with her, and her tone was flat and emotionless—not cruel or taunting, but simply blank, devoid of feeling.

From her seat atop the boxes, Lynzee shivered slightly. "She's not even pretending to be alive. Who let her down here?"

"We don't keep anyone out, so long as they pay." Brix shrugged. "She makes us money, then she stays, eh, boss?"

"Let's get this fight over with," Taylor spat. "I'll show you what it means to fight with honor, _butcher_."

Talonwing gave no sign that the insults fazed her at all; she merely raised her hands and entered a fighting stance, her feet evenly spread and steady against the earth.

"Well…all right!" Lem shook his head, a little off-kilter but determined to follow procedure. "On my count, combatants—three…two…one… _fight_!"

Taylor launched into combat almost immediately, a manic howl rising from his throat as he closed in on the elf woman. Talonwing watched him calmly, apparently without worry, and it was soon obvious why she lacked concern; as the massive human bore down on her, she simply sidestepped out of his path. Already carried by his momentum, Taylor zoomed past her, unable to stop. The Knight delivered a solid kick to the back of his knees as he passed, and the human collapsed into a jelly-like pile of limbs, roaring with pain as he fell.

Talonwing folded her hands behind her back as her opponent forced himself to his feet and turned, growling menacingly at her.

"You'll learn better than to make a fool of me, _corpse_." He charged her again, and again, she stepped out of his way, this time landing a solid punch to his lower back, right at the base of his spinal cord. He shivered, but stayed standing, groaning as he pulled himself around and turned to face her. Now it was beginning to dawn on him that he could not win by simply running the Knight over, and Lynzee watched with interest as the real fight began, the opponents now facing one another with hands raised in preparation to punch.

Taylor was tall, broad, and strong, clearly built for hand-to-hand combat, and in any normal fight, Lynzee was sure he would have had the advantage. In this fight, however, he was rendered ineffective simply by virtue of his own rage. He let it make him clumsy, and the Death Knight took advantage of this again and again, factually and emotionlessly weaving through his attacks and defenses and landing splintering punches and kicks right to his pressure points. Even when she did take the occasional hit, she made no sound to indicate any sort of pain, simply pressing on despite the black eye and the bruises blooming against her pale skin. The crowd watched in silent thrall, their eyes devouring the brutal match.

"She's _destroying_ him," Brix whispered in awe.

Lynzee made no comment in reply; she wasn't sure what to say. All of the male Death Knights had postured and blustered, much the same as Taylor; this woman was efficient and ruthless in every way, and it was terrifying to watch. The goblin boss shivered at the imagination of the elf in saronite armor on a killing field. This was a true weapon of slaughter, clothed in flesh.

The woman finally brought Taylor down; he fell unconscious without a word, his body making a meaty _smack_ against the arena floor. There was no sound of cheering to follow her victory, only the faint jingle as gold exchanged hands.

Surprisingly, the Death Knight bowed respectfully to Taylor's prone figure before exiting the floor and going toward the line for the winners' bracket.

Brix swore reverently. "Listen to all that gold. I hope she _always_ comes to fight. We'll be rich."

Lynzee wasn't so sure she agreed.

The strong grog was sour and left a disgusting film on the back of Isa's throat, but that didn't stop her from tossing back nearly three flagons of the stuff as soon as she had claimed her table inside the shadowed pub.

It was almost three o'clock in the morning, and every other patron had vacated the premises of the Shady Lady long ago; the only figures left inside the tavern were Isa and the stout dwarven barkeep who manned the pub during the wee hours of the morning. The grey-haired male looked out at her with something like sympathy, watching as she smacked down the empty flagon and signaled for another.

"Again, Isa?" Falrith Ironkeg sighed and shook his head. "Tha's the third time this week."

"More." The woman's voice was hard and lifeless, and Falrith felt another surge of pity, though he didn't dare let it show in his face as he picked up the flagon and went to fetch more of the bitter alcohol, setting it down beside the Death Knight and chewing at his lip as he watched her down it in what seemed like only a few gulps.

"It doesn't _work_." Isa slammed the flagon down and exhaled sharply, leaning her head on her folded arms. She had pulled her long scarlet hair out of its bun, and it hung loose and unkempt around her shoulders, strands of it flying every imaginable way.

"Now, lass, what are ye tryin' to get drunk for?" Falrith folded his arms and gazed at Isa steadily. "Not that I've never been drunk, meself, o' course, but tha's always at parties and it's a grand old time. It seems to me ye're chasin' it for a different reason."

"You wouldn't understand," Isa said wearily, her voice muffled by her arms. "Not that it makes any difference, anyway. Apparently, alcohol doesn't work on _my kind_." The contempt in her voice brought a sad crease to Falrith's brows, despite his attempt to keep his face devoid of expression.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with all that fightin' ye've been doin', would it, lass?" Falrith asked gently.

Isa raised her head, staring at him with those strange, wintry blue eyes. Falrith was slightly unnerved by the sight, but he refused to back down; many people hated the Knights for what they had been forced to do, but the old dwarf only felt sorry for them.

Seeing that she could not intimidate him, Isa let go a long breath, her eyes becoming much less intense and much more pained. "I'm trying so hard to _feel_ something, Falrith. I _want_ to feel rage when I fight. I _want_ to get angry, to get drunk, but I just _can't_. There's nothing there."

"Seems to me ye're feelin' something now, Isa," Falrith replied gently. "Ye're feelin' pain, and sadness, and loneliness."

"That's not what I mean." She shook her head.

"You want that fire in yer belly," Falrith said. "Hot emotion to drive out the cold, hm?"

Isa nodded slowly, heavily. "I've done so many terrible things, and I know I deserve everyone's scorn and hatred. I want so badly to be angry, but this magic won't let me feel rage when I'm in battle. I just feel… _nothing_. And then when the fight is over, I just feel disgust."

"Drinkin' yerself into oblivion wouldn't make that go away, Isa." Falrith set a hand on the young woman's shoulder; she stiffened, but did not throw him off, and he gave an internal sigh of relief.

"I don't want to do anything else," Isa whispered.

"Well, I want ye to do better for yerself," Falrith declared pointedly. "Ye're a better woman than this, and ye don't belong in a dark pub at the wee hours of the morning tryin' to find solace in a drunken stupor."

"And where do I belong? In the ground?" Her voice snapped, winter's bite filling the air as her hatred—both for herself and others—made itself briefly visible.

"Isalea Talonwing, you know I don't think that," Falrith said firmly. "Whatever others may say about Knights, they say out of fear and mistrust, but I know that you and yer fellow Knights aren't butchers and slaughterers of men."

"But we _are_ ," Isa replied with a toneless laugh. "Not of our own power, but that's not enough to deny the horrors that we committed."

"Well, then, if it disgusts ye so much, seek penance!" Falrith thumped his fist on the table. "Make up for the sins ye perceive, and go out and do some good! Command an army; fight the Legion, fight the Twilight's Hammer, fight the Horde even! Put yerself in a place to bring safety to the people of the Alliance, and make restitution for all those things that haunt ye so deeply!"

Isa was silent for a long moment, and he could see the uncertainty in her eyes as she considered his words; finally, all she said was, "Bring me some water. Please."

It was not a confirmation, but the fact that she did not ask for alcohol gave Falrith some hope. He nodded and turned away, praying to the Light that the young woman would listen to his words and find some peace from the pain of her deeds.


End file.
